Community Identity and Evaluation of Oppositional Framing of Renewable Energy Projects: Learnings for Strategic Sustainability Communication

The use of renewable energy sources is rapidly expanding on a global scale. The climate crisis and recent political conflicts have accelerated the development and introduction of innovative technologies. Hydrogen is one such innovation. Debated internationally in political and industry networks, especially the production of green hydrogen is seen as the way to transform renewable energy such as wind and solar into a form of energy that is not only easier to transport but also easier to store. However, on the ground, the realization of new plants and hydrogen production facilities often causes conflicts with, for example, environmental or community groups. With the case study at hand, we explore community opposition to the development plan of the Hydrogen Park “Gladstone” in Australia. The qualitative content analysis of a text corpus drawn from Facebook postings and comments between December 2021 and April 2022 shows that the community went through a process of identity building by creating an opposition narrative of protecting place identity. Frames that have been activated were distrust and doubt in business activities and political decision-making and a lack of public safety. The chapter complements the existing framing studies on renewable energy with a new set of oppositional frames used in renewable energy communication. Despite the limitations of a case study and therefore a small sample of communication content, the insights from the study and the conceptual framework developed complement existing research in the fields of climate change and environment but also the growing area of strategic sustainability communication and broaden the understanding of frames in relation to a broader narrative of transition or transformation.